With well under a month to the General Election the parties various communication strategies are becoming clearer. As I said in a previous blog, this won’t be a social media election, but that isn’t stopping politicians from adopting new techniques to reach voters. The aim is to control the message, and drum it into the electorate, even if that means repeating ‘strong and stable leadership’ ad nauseum.

There are four key tactics that are emerging – and could serve as PR lessons for other communicators:

While it is difficult for businesspeople to follow this strategy to the letter and duck tough media appearances, it should serve as a blueprint for showing your human side if you want to demonstrate that you are just a normal person, with interests and passions beyond your job.

2. Go where the audience isIt isn’t an election that will be won or lost on social media, but that doesn’t mean the channels can’t be used to get the message out there. The Prime Minister took part in a Facebook Live event with ITV News, essentially reaching an audience in the easiest manner for them. In reality there’s no difference between Facebook Live and a televised phone-in – as proved by Jeremy Corbyn trying to hijack the event by sending in a question himself. It is simply a question of going where the audience is – something that chief executives should also bear in mind.

3. Exploit the systemOnce an election is declared, impartiality rules kick in for broadcasters. Covering TV and radio (down to community stations), they mean that no one party should be favoured, personal political preferences shouldn’t be aired by presenters and due weight is given to the larger parties. What this means in practice is that over the course of a bulletin, all major parties must receive airtime – and it must be presented in an unbiased manner. Hence the huge amount of effort put into campaigning in front of the camera, with politicians criss-crossing the country to launch manifestos and policies. In contrast, newspapers are free to add as much comment as they like, making politicians much warier of them.

Again, I’m not suggesting that PR people try and break the rules when it comes to getting their clients in front of the media, but understanding how different types of media work is vital to providing them with a story that works for them, and their audience.

You shouldn’t follow the Conservative strategy to the letter, and indeed being too polished can be detrimental to your message. However ensuring you have set detailed objectives, have the right messages, plan how you are going to deliver them and are fully prepared is more likely to project the image you want to be known for, rather than seeming to be continually running to catch up. As the election unfolds, expect to hear the words “strong and stable” a lot more………………

There’s been a number of recent pieces about the rise of self-learning technology that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to carry out tasks that would previously have been too complex for a machine. From stock trading to automated translations and even playing Frogger, computers will increasingly take on roles that used to rely on people’s skills.

Netflix used an algorithm to analyse the most watched content on its service, and found that it included three key ingredients – Kevin Spacey, director David Fincher and BBC political dramas. So when it commissioned original content, it began with House of Cards, a remake of a BBC drama, starring Spacey and directed by (you’ve guessed it) Fincher.

This rise of artificial intelligence is worrying a lot of people – and not just Luddites. The likes of Stephen Hawking, Bill Gates and Elon Musk have all described it as a threat to the existence of humanity. They worry that we’ll see the development of autonomous machines with brains many thousands of times larger than our own, and whose interests (and logic) may not square with our own. Essentially the concern is that we’re building a future generation of Terminators without realising it.

They are right to be wary, but a couple of recent stories made me think that human beings actually have several big advantages – we’re not logical, we don’t follow the facts and we don’t give up. Psychologist Daniel Kahneman won a Nobel Prize for uncovering the fact that the human mind is made up of two systems, one intuitive and one rational. The emotional, intuitive brain is the default for decision making – without people realising it. So in many ways AI-powered computers do the things we don’t want to do, leaving us free to be more creative (or lazy, dependent on your point of view).

Going back to the advantages that humans have over systems, the first example I’d pick is the UK general election. All the polls predicted a close contest, and an inevitable hung parliament – but voters didn’t behave logically or according to the research and the Tories trounced the opposition. While you might disagree with the result, it shows that you can’t predict the future with the clarity that some expect.

Humans also have an in-built ability to try and game a system and find ways round it, often with unintended consequences. This has been dubbed the Cobra effect after events in colonial India. Alarmed by the number of cobras on the loose, the authorities in Delhi offered a bounty for every dead cobra handed in. People began to play the system, breeding snakes specifically to kill and claim their reward. When the authorities cottoned on and abandoned the programme, the breeders released the now worthless snakes, dramatically increasing the wild cobra population. You can see the same attempt to rig the system in the case of Navinder Singh Sarao, the day trader who is accused of causing the 2010 ‘flash crash’ by spoofing – sending sell orders that he intended to cancel but that tricked trading computers into thinking the market was moving downwards. Despite their intelligence, trading systems cannot spot this sort of behaviour – until it is obviously too late.

The final example is when humans simply ignore the odds and upset the form book. Take Leicester City. Rock bottom of the English Premiership, the Foxes looked odds-on to be relegated. Yet the players believed otherwise, kept confident and continued to plug away. The tide now looks as if it has turned, and the team is just a couple of points away from safety. A robot would have long since given up……..

So artificial intelligence isn’t everything. Giving computers the ability to learn and process huge amounts of data in fractions of a second does threaten the jobs of workers in the knowledge economy. However it also frees up humans to do what they do best – be bloody minded and subversive, think their way around problems, and use their intuition rather than the rational side of their brain. And of course, computers still do have an off switch………….

Essentially a general election campaign is an exercise in marketing. Parties are trying to reach distinct audiences with their key messages and convince them to put a cross in the box next to their candidate’s name. To confuse matters slightly you have both national and local campaigns, potentially with different issues that have to be addressed. For example in some constituencies it is simply a matter of defending a majority by making sure people go out to vote, while in the marginals where the election will be won or lost it is about securing every vote possible.

It is also a pressure cooker environment. General election marketing is carried out in an intense campaigning period, with the eyes of the media permanently trained on everything that the parties do. So, for normal marketers what lessons can we learn – both positive and negative? I’d pick out five key ones:

1. Show passionOne of the criticisms levelled against David Cameron is that he doesn’t seem to care about the election and potentially winning a second term in office. Whether this is true or not, his perceived insouciance stands in stark contrast to the firebrand rhetoric of the challenger parties such as UKIP and the SNP. If you want to connect with your audience, show that you really are engaged with them and demonstrate you understand their concerns.

2. Don’t take your audience for grantedThe days of a two party system appear to be consigned to history, with some of the safest Tory and Labour seats under attack from challenger parties. This is part of a wider dissatisfaction with professional politicians, which the electorate feel is out of touch with their lives and concerns. The lesson for marketers is that challengers can pop up in any industry, no matter how high the barriers to entry, if you fail to deliver what your audience wants.

3. Check, check and check againI’ve had an election leaflet that says “insert local message here” at the bottom, while Tory MP Matthew Hancock has been embarrassed by an unfortunate fold of a campaign flyer that removes the first three letters from his name. The message is clear – no matter how pressured you are, it is vital to check everything that goes out if you are to avoid slip-ups.

4. InnovateThere hasn’t been a lot of innovation in how the main parties have campaigned during this election. Speeches, battle buses, visits, kissing babies and celebrity endorsements have been the norm. Ed Miliband visited Russell Brand, but given that Brand had earlier told his followers not to bother voting it remains to be seen what the impact of his chat actually will be. The TV debates that helped Nick Clegg to power last time did happen, but in a variety of formats that meant they lost their overall potency – exactly as David Cameron had hoped. Perhaps what is really needed is innovation within the whole process. You can register online to vote, but you can’t yet vote online or via text. Surely it is time to change this to encourage greater participation?

5. Embrace all channelsOne of the key differences between most marketing and a general election is that each party is aiming to appeal to a wide age range. So you have to have specific messages for older audiences and the millennials who could be voting for the first time. That’s one of the reasons that this was predicted to be an election that embraced social media, particularly to reach younger voters, who traditionally have been less likely to vote. I’m not convinced that any party really nailed social media – or even if that is possible – but think that most of them could have done more to build engagement on the channel. Still, Twitter saw some interesting memes, with #milifandom making Ed Miliband an unlikely sex symbol.

As I write this on the morning of polling day the expected result is a hung parliament, with no party having a sufficient majority to govern alone. So on that score the major parties’ marketing will have failed. However if you look at the campaign as a whole, there are plenty of lessons to learn about what to do – and probably most importantly, what not to.

We’re now well into the General Election campaign and commentators are examining which media politicians are going to use with engage with voters. I’ve already talked about the debacle around the televised debates, which David Cameron is doing his best to scupper, but what of social media?

Rt Hon David Cameron, MP, Conservative Party leader, during his visit to Oxfam headquarters in Oxford. Full version. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

However, there are already signs that social media will pay a bigger role in this election. For a start, social media is a good way of reaching the core 18-24 demographic that is currently disengaged from politics. 56% of this age group didn’t vote at the last election, so winning their support could be crucial in a contest that is currently too close to call.

We are also in an election where the core support of the traditional big two parties is being swayed by the rise of UKIP, the SNP and the Greens. So, rather than just appealing to floating voters in a certain number of swing seats, the Conservatives and Labour both need to demonstrate to their supporters that they understand their concerns and have policies to win them over. This means that they are likely to be more aggressive than in the past, judging that alienating the middle ground is a price worth paying for retaining traditional voters.

How this plays out generally will be fascinating, but what can social media provide? Early indications suggest there are six areas where it will be most used:

1. Attacking the oppositionUnlike offline or TV advertising, social media is largely unregulated. Which means you can get away with more online – for example, the Tory party is financing 30 second pre-roll “attack” ads on YouTube the content of which would be banned on TV. Given the desire to reassure core voters, expect tactics like this to be used even more as the campaign unfolds.

2. Managing the real-time news cycleCNN brought about the 24 hour a day news cycle. Twitter has changed that to give minute-by-minute, real-time news. Stories can gain traction incredibly quickly, and fade with the same speed. Parties will therefore look to try and control (or at the very least manage) social media during the campaign, monitoring for trends that they can piggyback and starting stories of their own. And given that the media will also be monitoring what politicians are saying, expect a rash of stories with a shelf life of minutes and hours, rather than days and weeks.

3. Reaching votersOne of the most powerful parts of social media is the demographic profiling it provides advertisers with. This means that spending on advertising can be extremely targeted towards potential supporters, with little wastage. Figures obtained by the BBC show that the Tories are on course to spend over a million pounds on Facebook during the course of the election, based on current activities. Of course, reaching voters is one thing, the next step is to actively engage with them, starting conversations, listening and responding to their concerns. That takes time and skill, so expect a lot of effort to be thrown at content and conversations.

4. Monitoring voting patternsThere’s a lot of excitement about Big Data, and in particular how you can draw insights from the conversations happening on social media. Party strategists will be able to monitor what is trending on networks, and then use this feedback to evolve or change their strategies to focus on areas that are resonating with particular groups. However this sort of monitoring is still in its infancy, so results will need to be cross-checked before parties decide to do a U-turn on key policies.

5. Amplifying successThird party endorsement is always welcome, so politicians will look to share and publicise content, such as news stories, that position them in a good light, and also encourage their supporters to do the same. This has already happened with celebrity interviews with the likes of Ant and Dec and Myleene Klass. However, as journalist Sean Hargrave points out, the Tories have a problem here – much of the right leaning media (The Sun, The Times and Daily Telegraph) are behind full or partial paywalls, making sharing difficult. In contrast the likes of The Guardian, Mirror and Independent are completely free and design content to be as shareable as possible. That just leaves the Tories with the Daily Mail……..

6. Making it bitesizeLike any modern digital campaign, the election will run on content. And to appeal to time-poor voters it will need to be carved up into bitesize chunks, such as blogs, Vines, Tweets and Facebook posts. Politicians are meant to be masters of the soundbite, so this should be just a question of transferring their offline skills to the digital world.

Social media will definitely be more of a battleground at this election, if only because more people are on Twitter, Facebook and other networks compared to 2010. Parties and politicians will look to adopt the tactics above, but with varying degrees of success. Some, such as those that have been engaging with voters for years, will do it well, but expect more gaffes from those that don’t understand the difference between a public tweet and a private direct message and decide to show the world pictures of their underwear…………or worse.

Why Revolutionary Measures?

Marketing is undergoing a revolution. The advent of social media provides the opportunity for one-to-one communication for the first time since the move to an industrial society. This blog will look at what this means for B2B PR and marketing, incorporating my own thoughts/rants and interests. Do let me know your feedback!

About me

I'm Chris Measures and I've spent the last 18 years creating and implementing PR and marketing campaigns for technology companies. I've worked with everyone from large quoted companies to fast growth start-ups, giving me unrivalled experience and ideas.
I'm now director of Measures Consulting, an agency that uses this expertise to deliver PR and marketing success for technology businesses.

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